Ask the IT Guy: Changing your Homepage – Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is very similar to Chrome, it has the ability to save your session from last time, or open a specific set of pages. You also access it’s settings through the same area.

First, open up Firefox and open the set of tabs that you want to be your startup pages. Once you have them ready, click on the Hamburger (three column) button on the upper right and select “Options” (the gear).

In the settings page that opens you are looking for the “General” heading, then “startup” (pretty much right at the top).

Under the Firefox default browser settings is a drop-down that says “When Firefox Starts”. Here you can select three options.

Show your homepage (which are the tabs we’re setting up).

Show a blank page.

Show my windows from last time.

I prefer to show my windows from last time, but setting a homepage is just as simple. Select the “Show your homepage” from the dropdown, then click the “Use Current Pages” button.

Now – Firefox is a bit more difficult if you want to manually type in pages. They all go on the same line and are separated by a Pipe “|” symbol. You can find this on your keyboard by your return key with the Backslash “\” character. It often looks like a broken line on the keyboard key, but creates the full line symbol.

Expert Tip – It is possible to change the page that opens as your ‘new tab’ page in Firefox. But it is hidden from the average user. Open a new tab and type “about:config”. This opens the advanced settings – you’ll see a warning when you first open it. This isn’t for the faint of heart. Don’t mess with things if you aren’t sure of what you’re doing. There is a “browser.newtab.url” setting. Changing this will change your new tab page.